Growing the Union City Museum

1.In the beginning, Union Township were endless expanses of virgin forest, a part of the wilderness that stretched from Lake Erie to the Ohio River and the Allegheny Mountains.

2.The trees grew closely together and here and there openings in the trees were covered with tall meadow grass and small sparkling creeks wound their way through the grass.

3.The trees in this forest came from many different families. There were red, white, black and yellow oaks, bushy pines, stately hemlocks, red and white beeches, black and white walnut, hickory, and chestnut.

4.Other trees included sassafras, gumwoods, cedars, basswoods, white and yellow poplars, black and white ash and hard and soft maples. Along the edges of the forest grew wild grape vines.

5.During the day the forest noises included the top-tapping of busy woodpeckers, the noisy brawling of crows, the chattering of squirrels and the gobbles of wild turkeys.

7.Night and day the forest teemed with deer, bear, rabbits, fox, raccoons, opossum, mink, and martin. This was the wilderness that the early settlers in Union Township and Union Mills fought and conquered.

8.In 1795, the Pennsylvania Legislature passed an act giving settlers 400 acres of land and a six percent allowance to settle the land. The settlers were required to pay seven pounds and ten shillings for every ten acres of land cleared into the state treasury. When they had done this, they and their heirs would have clear title to the land forever.

9.David Watts, a lawyer from Carlisle, Pa., and his brother-in-law William Miles, obtained a surveying commission and came to the land south of the Tenth Donation District, which included Union, Concord, and half of Wayne Townships. They surveyed the land and brought in settlers, paying the required amount into the treasury and dividing the land with the settlers, each taking half.

10. By 1800, William Miles had a family placed on every 400 acre tract in the entire district.

11. Going into the wilderness of the Tenth Donation District wasn’t a venture for the faint hearted. For transportation, settlers either rode horseback or floated down the rivers and creeks on rafts or small boats.

12.After they had obtained their land, claimed it and built their cabins, the settlers had to buy all of their provisions until they could clear land to raise food.

13.Clearing land usually took about a year and a half. All provisions had to be brought from Pittsburgh in boats and pushed up the Allegheny River and then up French Creek. Provisions cost so much that many settlers found themselves deeply in debt.

14.Most of the settlers were poor and had to depend on whatever they could grow to live.

15. The settlers ate mostly mush, corn bread, potatoes and game, which often had to be eaten without salt. Pork, flour, sugar, and other groceries sold at very high prices and were considered luxuries.

17.Wolves thrived and packs of them often surrounded cabins and kept settlers awake with their howling. Soon a bounty of $10-$12 per head was paid for their scalps. Occasionally a panther or wildcat terrified whole neighborhoods with their screaming.

18.The settlers built cabins of unhewn logs laid on top of each other with cracks between them filled with mud. Later, they build cabins of hewn timber with mortar substituted for mud.

19.Hardly any of the cabins were plastered and many were without window glass. Instead, settlers used oiled cloth in place of glass.

20.The settlers cooked over immense open fireplaces. They had no matches and if a fire went out, someone had to walk to the nearest neighbor to borrow a brand. Pine knots or tallow candles were used for light.

21.All clothing was homemade and a spinning wheel could be found in almost every house. Many women also had looms.

22. Water for household use was drawn from deep wells by a creaking sweep.

23. Many settlers came into Union Township and built cabins far apart from each other throughout the forest. Andrew Thompson and his family built their cabin about a mile and a half west of Matthew and Elizabeth Gray, and Hugh Wilson settled about two miles southeast of the Grays.

24. Twenty-four-year-old Hugh Wilson had left his wife, Hannah, back in Centre County, Ireland, and traveled to the wilderness of Union Township to build a home for her. All during that summer, fall, and winter of 1797, he worked hard all day and spent the long lonely nights alone in his cabin.

25. Then in the summer of 1798, Hugh’s family arrived. Nathaniel Frompton, Hannah’s father, escorted her and her daughter, Elizabeth, to the cabin that Hugh had built for them.

26. Hannah was fair, healthy, robust, and experienced in pioneering since her father had been a pioneer in her childhood. She was always ready to pitch in and do her share of the work. As Hugh put it, “She’s a good one to have around in emergencies.”

27. Besides the Wilsons, John Richards and his grown family settled on the north side of French Creek and Jacob Shepard, a bachelor, settled with his widowed mother and two unmarried sisters two miles south of the Grays.

28. Andrew Thompson and his wife, Martha, were past middle age when they came to Union Township. Their oldest son, William, also was one of the first settlers.

29. The people of Union Township needed a blacksmith and Daniel Harrington set up a shop at the foot of Ox Bow Hill and did all of the custom work of the county. Abel Thompson came to Union Township in 1801 and also set up a blacksmith shop.

30. Another first in Union Township wasn’t quite as positive. One June morning in 1800, John Wilson, the father of Hugh Wilson walked along the path from his house to his son’s cabin.

31. He tripped over the roots of a tree and fell, and his fall aggravated a rupture which had been bothering him for a long time. After a few days of suffering he died and his death saddened the entire neighborhood.

32.In this wilderness there was no minister, no boards for a coffin and no other white man had ever been buried here. The people gathered their courage, resources, and themselves and they buried John Wilson with as much ceremony as they could on the Frank Pollock Jr. farm on Concord Road. They marked his grave with an original stone.

33. An extremely energetic man, William Miles had built a grist mill and a saw mill by the winter of 1800.

34. Many people in the new community felt that a distillery was second in importance only to a grist mill. William Miles built a log house at the mouth of a little stream that emptied into French Creek on the south side, nearly opposite the grist mill.

35. William Miles put in the apparatus necessary for making whiskey, not because he was fond of it, but because people of the time didn’t understand its harmful effects and used it for medicinal purposes, and to forget the loneliness of the vast forest for a time.

36. Farmers usually cut roads from their farm houses to the mills, and they carried their grists to the mill on horseback.

37. The farmers who lived on the south side of French Creek were forced to cross to the mill where the water was low or when the creek was frozen.

38. One time Hugh Wilson tried to cross French Creek when it was high, with his grist on a borrowed horse. The horse got into the deep and rapid water and he became frightened and unruly. He threw Hugh Wilson and the grist off and then he lunged at them with his forefeet. Hugh Wilson sank to the bottom of the creek.

39. As he thrashed around, Wilson swallowed a lot of water. Unable to help himself, he floated with the current near the south side of the creek bank.

40.Mrs. Miles saw Hugh Wilson from her window. She ran down to him because no other men were there. She held onto the bushes with one hand and caught Hugh’s coat skirts with the other hand. She dragged the unconscious Hugh out on the shore and then she called for help. Eventually Hugh recovered.

41. The stories of William and Elizabeth Miles and Hannah and Hugh Wilson as well as many others are recorded in displays and documents in the Union City Area Historical Museum.

42. The Museum began as a gleam of an idea in the minds of Norman and Vi Merrill and Harold and Nancy Maynard. Harold and Nancy were visiting the Merrills and they admired two antique seltzer bottles on the Merrill’s fireplace mantle.

43.Norman or Nonie, as his friends called him, said to Harold, “We should start a historical museum for items like these bottles and the other historic things we have around town.”

44.This conversation and others like it took place in 1964. By October 1969, the Borough of Union City found it necessary to create a Museum Commission to handle the historical museum that kept growing and growing.

46. Harry L. Smiley, former Borough Secretary and former Union City Mayor, also helped shape the museum.

47. The American Legion and Civil Defense cooperated to start and endorse and encourage the Union City Museum. Volunteer help, gifts, and lots of public enthusiasm were essential ingredients as well.

48. Harold Maynard recalled, “We started out with items on display right in the front window of the building. Then we kept having to move them further back.”

49. More years passed and the Union City Area Historical Museum continued to add items and displays. On the first floor J.C. Fischer upright piano that used to belong to William A. Gillett sat waiting to send its mellow tones to the other two museum floors.

50. The piano stool has a square upholstered seat with fringe and looks too fragile to sit on, even though William Gillett remembered sitting on it for many hours practicing his scales and playing songs.

51.Model airplanes of World War II and Korea vintage hang overhead in realistic flight patterns a little further in from the piano. Paul Gregor, a long-time Union City resident, assembled the models, putting in several years of painstaking work.

52.The second floor of the museum featured a tonsorial parlor with a barber standing with razor and shaving mug at the ready to give a haircut and shave.

53. Across the hall, a one-room schoolhouse waited for students to slip into the wooden desks, recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, and begin the lessons of the day

54. An old fashioned bedroom living room and Victorian water closet were also displayed on the second floor.

55. A few of the displays on the third floor included chairs from the Union City Chair Company and an exhibit from Snap-Tite.

56. The Union City Area Historical Museum has had several curators in its history. Louis De Maria was the first curator and helped to collect, clean, and arrange the displays. Jane Clark served as museum curator from 1976 to 1989 and she organized museum records and wrote a collection of historical biographies.

57.Ed Cieslak served as curator in the 1990s and before that he did research and miscellaneous jobs for the museum.

58. “I think we have one of the best museums in western Pennsylvania,” he said. “If you don’t believe me, stop in and see.”

59. One of the museum’s most unique items is its hand-crafted hearse dating from 1875. The hearse is displayed in the garage area of the museum along with a 1925 Model T Ford truck. Joseph W. Arnold of Pleasantville, Pa., built the hearse and Mrs. Arnold Sr. and Willis Arnold, the third generation of morticians in the family, donated the hearse to the Union City Area Historical Museum. Wilbert Arlet and Norman Merrill, two of the museum’s founding fathers, restored the hearse.

60. The Union City Area Historical Museum is not a dead place, buried in a past full of horse-drawn hearses. It is vital and alive, a link between generations and a stepping stone from the past to the present into the future. It grew just as Union Township and Union City Borough did, from a nucleus of a few people to a thriving, living community. People created Union City and people created and continue to create the Union City Area Historical Museum to celebrate community history.